NOVEL WEB Chapter 226: Anywhere
I keep healing Gamma for a bit longer until I’m sure all her internal and external wounds are healed. While I’m doing so I’m thinking about the promise ring that’s underneath my gauntlet. While I did say to Sid that I was glad Sam wasn’t here, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about not having her by my side in a time like this.
In the meantime, Sid is keeping watch to see if anyone is trying to sneak up on us. With this little light it is very hard to see anything though and I’m sticking out quite a bit with the light coming from the spell I’m casting. But just like using my light earlier to scour the area in the search for Gamma, using the light now is a necessity.
“Are you almost done, Amicia?” Sid asks while he’s peering into the distance.
“Almost.” I reply. “I’m down to setting her bones back in place. It’ll take a whole lot longer for it to heal completely but at least she won’t be bleeding out internally. We should probably find some shelter somewhere before I do more.”
It takes me another three minutes before I’m okay with stopping the healing for the time being. Gamma is already looking a lot better but she is not going to wake up any time soon from what I can tell.
“I’m done.” I pick up Gamma into my arms and walk over to Sid’s side.
Sid nods. “Good… I haven’t seen any movement yet either.” He then looks down at me. “This might sound stupid, but could you try teleporting us out of here? The chances are slim that it does since we are at the source of your teleport’s inhibitor, but me might as well try, no?”
I nod back. By the feeling this place gives off I can instinctively tell it’s not going to work, but on the off-chance it does, it’s not a bad idea. “Grab hold of my arm.”
Sid does as I ask and I start channeling power inside of me, closing my eyes and imagining the manor back in Hofudstadr as it’s the first place I think of when it comes to safety. But as I start to cast the spell itself, that familiar headache snaps back, immediately pulling me out of focus. “As expected, that’s not going to work.” I bite the pain away.
“So we go and find shelter now? Or…”
“We will have to see, but I do think we should try to get away from this place at least. Apart from this stone platform there’s nothing here but sand and dust. And if this platform did anything, it’s not doing anything now.”
“Alright.” Sid nods in agreement. “Which way do we go?”
“That’s maybe the most important question to ask.” I nod as well, looking around us afterwards. “If this were Lady of the Bracelets, the bad guys would be in the direction of the fire spewing volcano.”
“I don’t think I’m familiar with that movie…” Sid replies.
“Not too important I suppose.” I kicked sand from underneath my feet as I thought on for a couple more moments. “Let’s perhaps go to one of those mountains over there.” I motion towards the dark shapes in the distance. At least those might have caves or something like that.” In the end, when an area is as unknown to us as this one, it doesn’t matter where you go, as everything could literally be anywhere. Doesn’t really make sense to try to make a logical guess if you have absolutely no information to base said logic upon.
I carry Gamma along as Sid follows my lead. Seeing that he had issues earlier in the sand I decided it was best that I’d carry her instead of him. It appears that he didn’t mind that decision at all.
We trudge along for a good while in the darkness towards the even darker mountainous silhouettes in the distance but they don’t really appear to come closer, at this pace we won’t get very far any time soon.
I look back at our towering friend. “Should I try carrying you along too and just fly towards the mountains? It’ll go a lot faster like that. You can hold Gamma and I’ll just grab a hold of you.”
“Are you sure you can carry me with my equipment?”
“Let’s try. I could carry my sister and Max for a while. I think they come close to the weight of you and Gamma combined.” I stop for a moment and gently lower Gamma down onto the sand and walk over to Sid. I take hold of him from the back, hooking my arms underneath his and then flapping my wings a couple of times to test his weight. He does weigh quite a bit, definitely more than Max and my sister, but Gamma’s light weight will compensate for a lot of that. “I think it’ll work as long as you hang your hammer away. It’ll get in the way if you put it on your back.”
“Okay, give me a second.” Sid nods and looks around one of his pouches for equipment, finding a piece of rope swiftly after. “I’ll tie it around my ankle, that way it’ll float beneath us.”
“As long as it doesn’t hook it on anything else while we are flying over.”
“I’ll make it short, don’t worry about it.
I nod and while Sid busies himself tying the rope I walk back over to Gamma, taking her off the sand. In my arms the purple catgirl appears so serene and peaceful. Quite a big difference from how she normally is. Her breathing is calm and steady too, no longer pained and heavy like it was when I found her although she still doesn’t show any signs of waking up soon.
Sid, know with his hammer tied to his ankle, walks over to me and opens his arms to receive Gamma.
I gently transfer her over. “Hold on to her tight, okay?”
“You don’t need to tell me that, Amicia.” Sid smiles as he takes a firm hold of the catgirl. “She’s not going anywhere.”
“Good.” I smile and get back behind him, repeating the pose I’d practiced earlier. With a powerful flap of my wings I lift both of them into the air, the hammer trailing just below. While I do feel the effect of it swinging around loosely, it’s still rather doable. “Tell me if you see anything down below, okay?”
“Will do.” Sid nods.
Taking flight proves to be a good idea as the pace we manage to keep is considerably higher than when we were on foot. With the mountains in the distance now actually appearing larger at a way faster rate than before. Finally, visible progress.
As for my endurance, that appears to be holding up pretty well too. Even while carrying this rather large load beneath me for a couple of hours now, I don’t really notice my muscles cramping up, neither is my heartrate elevating by much either.
When we are about halfway to the mountains, at least from what I can tell, Sid suddenly calls for my attention. “Amicia, I think I see something down there. Definitely some kind of manmade structures.
I slow down my flight and look down at the ground. It’s not very obvious in the dark sand, but there do seem to be some kind of stone structures down below. Ruins at most, but still more than what we have encountered so far.
“Do you want to check it out?” I ask. “Or do you want to continue on to the mountains?”
“We might be able to find something down there.” Sid replies. “Besides, I’m getting a little bit peckish. It’s at least going to give us some cover while we eat something.”
“Fair enough.” I nod and slowly lower my friends down to the ground.
The tallest walls, if you can even call them that anymore, of the ruins stand about as high as my belly button and the entire inside is filled with the same dark sand that’s literally everywhere around us.
“That’s less cover than I had hoped.” I comment as I look around. As I do, I do notice that while the walls aren’t very high, the footprint of the building that once stood here is quite big. At least forty by forty meters if I had to take a guess. From the looks of it, that’s quite similar to the other walls in the sand dunes around us. I look back at Sid. “Could you give me a moment?”
“Uh… sure?” Sid was already digging around his packs to look for some food. “What are you going to do?”
“I just want to check something.” Without any further explanation I jump back into the air and do a quick flyover of the surrounding area. The buildings seem to be positioned in some kind of grid pattern.
When I land back down next to Sid I cross my arms in thought. “You know what these remind me of?”
“Skyscrapers?” Sid hands me a bit of dried meat as he answers my question.
“So I’m not the only one…”